The evening before the scheduled three hour debate, partly sparked by the Times’ recent Cities Fit For Cycling campaign, will see an estimated 500 cyclists ride in unison to highlight the points made in the Times’ manifesto and wider issues surrounding cycle safety in the UK. Cyclists have been invited by the London Cycling Campaign to meet at the Duke of York’s Steps on The Mall at 6:15pm for a 6:30pm start.
It is hoped that the flash ride, coordinated by cycling campaigners including Cyclists in the City and I Bike London, will place further pressure on MPs meeting for the parliamentary debate about cycling in Britain on Thursday 23rd February and remind them of the desperately required changes to transport design in the capital and, ultimately, the rest of the UK. The London Cycling Campaign expresses concerns that many MPs do not cycle and have never cycled in London and therefore could have a laissez faire attitude to what can be done to increase road safety.
Danny Williams of Cyclists in the City commented on his blog: “It’s not even about ‘safer cycling’ per se. It’s a polite but forceful request to our MPs and to the Mayor to listen to and think about the bigger picture: to make our cities places in which we can live and get around more easily and healthily for all of us.”
Cycling campaigners have spent many hours, and for that matter many blog posts, demonstrating how our roads are being designed including integral dangers to cyclists and pedestrians, and despite the positive reaction that the Times’ manifesto has achieved publicly only 58 MPs have signed up. This is why flash rides of this nature are so important for increasing awareness; that cycling is not marginal and that by making room and indeed budgets for cycling infrastructure, the wider issues surrounding road safety and the debate of shared space will be properly considered.